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Education

Ph.D. New York University, 2008
Post. Grad. Dip. University of Oxford, 2001
BA University of Pennsylvania, 1996

Bio

My research focusses on the Hebrew Bible and the social, political, and legal world that produced it in the first millennium BCE. I read biblical literature in light of archaeological evidence from ancient Israel and literary evidence from other ancient Near Eastern societies. The questions I ask as I read the Bible are shaped by my own experience as a Jamaican and by conversations taking place across the humanities and social sciences about space, place, and power.

My first book, Images of Egypt in Early Biblical Literature (De Gruyter, 2009), offered a regional paradigm for understanding the development of the biblical traditions about Israel's origins in Egypt. My second book, The King and the Land (Oxford University Press, 2016), maps monarchic production of space and discourse about it in the Iron Age Levant. In Space, Land, Territory and the Study of the Bible (Brill, 2017), I map eight approaches to the study of space and their implications for reading the Bible. I have also published several articles and book chapters on aspects of biblical and ancient Near Eastern law.

“Biblical Law in the Hebrew Bible.” In Christopher Matthews, ed., Oxford Bibliographies in Biblical Studies. New York: Oxford University Press, 2016.

“Exodus as a Theme.” In Naomi Sideman, ed., Oxford Bibliographies in Jewish Studies. New York: Oxford University Press, 2016.

Book Reviews

Review of Nili Wazana, All the Boundaries of the Land: The Promised Land in Biblical Thought in Light of the Ancient Near East. Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns, 2013. Journal of Religion 95 (2015): 389–391.

Review of David Miano, Shadow on the Steps: Time Measurement in Ancient Israel. SBL Resources for Biblical Study 64. Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2010. Journal of the American Oriental Society 133 (2013): 30–31.